Gears of War vs Kingdom Hearts II vs Resident Evil 4 vs Shadow of the Colossus 2009
Results Round One Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 Ulti's Analysis There were two games in this contest -- Shadow of the Colossus and Chrono Cross -- that I wanted to see lose more than any other. They're the two most overrated games ever made. After this match, I got my wish. I would have rather Shadow of the Colossus scored like 2%, but I'll take what I can get. This result still flooded the board with the "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS IS ART YOU GUYS ALL SUCK" topics I was hoping to see from its whiny-ass fanbase, so I was not disappointed at all. Good show! Nothing beats the sound of crying from a bad game's whiny fanbase. Nothing. I bet some of those people were even crying in real life, which makes the loss even better for me. I didn't end up winning this contest or even coming close, but man did I love a good deal of the results in it. With that out of the way, some overused line about casual shooters doing bad. Gears of War bombed, even though no one expected it to win. Et cetera. The real match here was obviously the battle for first place, and for once a battle for first place mattered because there was no way both RE4 and KH2 were going to get late into the contest this way. Whoever won this was almost a lock to repeat the effort in round 2, while the loser would likely repeat the trend and lose. This wasn't Mario Kart vs Super Metroid, because both games ended up in a big SNES cluster**** in round 2 and you couldn't guarantee a repeat of trends. This was much much different. The two games obviously ended up very close, but they weren't supposed to be. Before the contest, the consensus for the final was LTTP, FF7, Ocarina and FFX, with FFX being the most likely game not to make it. Contenders to upset it included... pretty much anything in the bottom half of the bracket if you were biased enough, but the big names were Brawl, Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 4 and even Metal Gear Solid. When you're a contender to possibly make the final, you don't go out and struggle to beat Kingdom Hearts 2. Kingdom Hearts is a strong series and all, but it's not finals-caliber. And for a time in this match, it looked like RE4 was in real danger of getting second place. It did well enough in the early parts of the poll, building a lead for itself overnight even though KH2 was performing well. But then the morning vote hit and all bets were off. KH2 started slowly chipping away at a very consistent rate come morning time, and continued chipping away all the way through the DSV. By the time that magical 3:00 p.m. EST came around, a lead that was once 1250 votes was down to 736, and we hadn't seen the insane Kingdom Hearts ASV yet. It looked like KH2 would catch fire with the ASV like it always does and win this match easily, but somehow it did not. Instead we got a prolonged, drawn-out, hours-long stall all the way until the end of the match. At 3, RE4's lead was 736. It ended up winning by 725 votes. An 11 shift in 9 hours is about as close a stall as one could imagine, and any potential KH2 pushes were met with pushbacks (at one point the lead was below 600, but it never felt like we were moving out of stall-land) until the end of the match and RE4's win here. But it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. This match proved RE4 was not a contender to make the final, and in all honestly it got lucky to get first place here. Holding off the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts day vote to win is no easy feat, and it basically won because of building up that 1250 vote lead overnight. Had Kingdom Hearts even prevented a 1000 vote lead overnight, things might have been different here. And if the original Kingdom Hearts were in this match instead of 2, I'm positive RE4 loses this -- X-Stats be damned. The other main reason RE4 won is because it's a quasi-Nintendo game. How else do you explain holding off the vaunted Kingdom Hearts day vote? You need a fanbase that also has a passable day vote, and Nintendo has one. In a way, RE4's massive overlapped fanbase is a blessing and a curse. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Tonight has me a little bit frightened. I'm a firm believer in RE4, but even so I'm very much surprised that no one seems to be giving KHII any real kind of chance at the win in this one. I mean RE4 has some things going in its favor (only option to make it to a Nintendo console, RE5 still bringing in visitors, RE1 and 2 looked decentish and 4 will of course be well ahead of them, KH has to split with another PS2 game), but it seems like a really good case for could also be made for Kingdom Hearts: * KHII sold nearly as well as the original, is owned by even more people on My Games, reviews between the two are about the same... if there's any series where the sequel could be just as strong as the first, I'd think it would have to be KH * New Square RPGs have been on fire- we vastly underestimated FF8, yet refused to adjust our thinking and have ended up underestimating FF9, FFX, and KH1 as well. shouldn't we start giving them more credit at some point? * KH1 put up 38% against what I would still argue wasn't terrible competition. it pounded Vice City straight up despite having to share the poll with another "kiddie" RPG (granted a win over GTA doesn't look that amazing anymore, but still, it was a slaughter) and even outdid Metroid Prime and Mario RPG combined. yeah yeah, everyone's been kicking Prime in the sack for the last week, but come on, isn't there a limit to how weak it could realistically be? * RE4 isn't really survival-horror, it's more of a shooter, and shooters have been bombing right and left this season. plus I'd have to imagine that there are a ton of RE4 fans who also enjoy Gear of War and vice versa- sure they're on different platforms, but I would still imagine there's a decent bit of overlap between the two (whereas KHII and SotC are such vastly different games that I doubt it has the same problem) So yeah, I still think RE4 is quite strong (and pretty independent) and don't disagree with those who took it to make a deep run into this bracket... I just don't think that tonight's poll provides ideal circumstances for it, and as a result I don't think it's going to be blowing KH2 out of the water. I'll go with * Resident Evil 4 - 35.91% * Kingdom Hearts II - 32.29% * Gears of War - 19.97% * Shadow of the Colossus - 11.83% Don't flop on me now, KH! (Watch, it somehow will- this series always does just the opposite of what I expect!) Next Day Review Whooo hooo, called a KH match right for the first time in my life! In my writeup I scolded us for continuing to underestimate New Square... based on today's preds, looks like we've finally gotten the picture! That part of the day was great, but in retrospect I'm not sure what I thinking with those picks for the bottom two games. I mean clearly RE4 was going to be hurting Gears (and a little bit back in the other direction), so why did I pick it to score only a few points less than Halo had the day before? And then I made the mistake of trying to set SotC equal to Wander despite every other cultish game doing way better than their protagonists on the modern half of the bracket. Oh well, live and learn! External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches